Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Today as I was cleaning up in the kitchen I realised that Max was being very, very quiet. As any mother of a toddler can attest, that is never a good thing.

I grabbed my camera (as you do when you think your child is doing something naughty) and quietly stuck is my head into his room. He was sitting there, with his books scattered all around him, reading to himself. (Well not actually reading - he's 18 months old - but you know what I mean). I did a quick double check to make sure that he wasn't just ripping all the pages out (like he was last time I caught him sitting amongst a pile of books), and then started snapping away.

After a few photos Max noticed that I was there are came over for a big hug, before settling back down in a different corner to do some more reading.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Sean and I have been living in our house for over two and a half years now and up until now I'm not sure that we had found the right interior style for us.

I've played around with a few different ideas, but have mainly held off on everything until we get the (seemingly elusive) floors done. Over the last couple of years my friends have heard me say 'once the floors are done, we will...." so many times.

I've got to the point now that I need to create some sort of interior style in our home. I'm tired of living in an unfinished, unstyled, mismatched home. We still don't have the moolah to just go out and buy everything we want. But making some design decisions now will help me know what to buy when I spot a bargain.

I have been on a pretty, girly, pink and white kick for a couple of months and I thought it was going to be the look we would go with. I've started incorporating it into our home (as seem here and here), but it's really not working for me. It kind of seems like I am fighting against the style of our building and trying to turn our home into something it's not.

When I woke up this morning I thought about it some more and it began to seem more and more ideal. Sean and I both have an affinity with the ocean, we love to scuba dive and our favourite holidays are always at island resorts. Max absolutely loves the ocean too and we take him to the beach as often as possible.

Because I dream of owning a beach house one day and can clearly picture how I will decorate it, I have always wanted to stay away from a beachy theme. In my mind that style has already been promised to my future beach house.

The images I have running through my head are a more grown up, every day kind of way to incorporate the tropics into our home. Lots of tropical gardens, big glossy dark green leaves in vases, coral, underwater photographs, dark timber accents and lots of white.

I had a play around today just using some things I have here at home to see if this type of style felt right for me. It does! I keep going back to the front room to make sure that it is still working for me, and so far so good.

I'll give it another couple of weeks, but fingers crossed I have finally found my groove.

I'm reposting this DIY from my previous blog. I was going through the archives last night and realised how much impact this tiny little change has had on our dining room. Enjoy!!

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About five years ago my Dad gave us his old dining room table and chairs, he'd only had the set for a couple of years and it's still in great condition.

It's really nice, but isn't really the right style for our new house. However replacing it is not a priority right now {it's pretty much at the bottom of the list}, so I decided to have a go at recovering the cushions.

I had another reason for doing so as well... a couple of years ago I was resting the iron on one of the chairs and it tipped over and burnt a whole right through one of the covers. I've used chair covers on the chairs for a few years to hide it, but I'm tired of how they look.

I bought the fabric from spotlight along with a cheap staple gun and set about recovering them.

It was really simple. I just unscrewed the cushions from the base.

Measured out how much fabric I would need.

and folded and stapled.

Once the covering was done I just screwed the cushions back on and sprayed them with a waterproofing spray to try and give them some protection from dirt, food and cat fur.

I'm reasonably happy with how the turned out. They're not perfect, but they'll do for now. I'm kind of thinking that I might like to paint the chairs white and then recover them {again} with a fabric that has some colour in it. {Like this, from here}

But I want to wait until we have tiles down first so that I have a better idea of what the dining room is going to look like.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

I have a serious thing for fairy lights. I love, love, love them. Every year after Christmas I cry a little on the inside when it's time to take them down. So for a while now I have been trying to think of a way to use fairy lights in my decor (without looking like I was just to lazy to take the Christmas lights down).

I was really inspired by a photo (that I can't find anywhere now, sorry) of a jar full of fairy lights sitting on a bedside table. I recreated it in our living room using an old Moccona jar and my Christmas tree lights.

It thought it looked ok, but not awesome. It had a few major things going against it... 1. there was about 10 metres of lights jammed into the jar and it would get really hot after being on for about an hour. 2. it really only looked good when it was turned on. The killer blow was when my bff Erin was visiting and she saw it from across the room and asked 'how come you have a jar of shredded paper over there?'. Three strikes and that jar of lights was out.

I wasn't ready to give up on the jar though, so I hunted around for some more attractive lights to go in it. When I was up in Hervey Bay the other day I found the sweetest little star shaped wire lights in Pandanus. They were adorable and nice and about two metres long. Perfect for my jar.

Once again though, they really only looked good when they were turned on and even then it wasn't everything I had hoped it would be. Sad face.

Then I stumbled across this picture on Pinterest. It combined two of my great loves, birds and fairy lights. Perfection!!

I had a birdcage in my sitting room that I had planned on painting white for ages. I took it out back and gave it about a billion coats of matte white paint. (I probably should've sanded it or primed it or something first, it took sooooo many coats to cover up the 'fake' rust.)

After I was happy with the paint job and it was completely dry I brought it back inside, weaved the fairy lights through it, turned it on and fell in love! It was exactly what I hoped it would look like and more!!

I took one of these photos with a flash and one without. The one without a flash give a better idea of how it looks in the sitting room at night. They also show the adorable way the lights twinkle a pattern onto the wall behind the cage.

I'm glad I persevered with the fairy lights because I love the way the make the room feel.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

I'm on a bit of a wardrobe makeover kick at the moment. That, combined with my serious pinterest addiction inspired me to make an earing display for my walk-in-wardrobe yesterday.

I scrounged around in the garage and found an old frame that I had half painted. I decided to paint the whole thing white. Which meant outside time (cue giggles and a happy dance from Max)!

This kid loves going outside more than anything else in the world. It doesn't matter to him that our backyard is unlandscaped and looks more like a building site than a surburban backyard, he just loves to get out there and play.

I splapped a quick coat of streaky white paint onto the frame, and then found a ball and got down to the serious business of playing with Max and Cooper.

Sidenote - this photo is a perfect example of why I would never make it as a fashion blogger. The jumper I'm wearing is one that my bff Erin bought back in 2002 (when we were young enough to get away with wearing 'surf' labels). About seven years ago she left it at my place in a bag of clothes I was supposed to drop off at Vinnies (one of our good old Aussie thrift stores). Like any person with a seriously stylish bff would do, I raided the bag for stuff I liked before I donated it. This jumper was one of the things I kept and I have been wearing it around the house every winter since. Sad but true.

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Twenty minutes later my streaky coat of paint was dry (got to love Queensland winters) so I applied two coats of spray paint to the frame. I waited 24 hours for the paint to dry and the nasty smell to fade and then brought the frame inside.

Then all I did was staple gun some ribbon onto the back of the frame. Add earings and hang it up on the side of my expedit. I LOVE the end result! Everytime I walk past it the earings do a little sparkle dance and I get a big goofy grin on my face.

Quick, easy and best of all free (all the materials were things I had lying around the house)!